Faith
by Maid Malcolm
Summary: Khaji Da has one last message for Jaime, although he knows it will never reach him.


You were the only one I truly trusted.

The first memory I can trust as true memory and not simply programming was reading your biosignature after initial integration. I read base life signs, measured out armor over your limbs, integrated our systems. You were not permanently hurt. I was damaged, but that did not matter; you were effectively undamaged. I did not remember my full mission. But I remembered that is was vital to protect you.

We often disagreed. You were quick to trust and quick to forgive. I did not understand either of those concepts. I could assess threat levels, but your blithe acceptance of outside information or potential threats based on "friendship" or "gut feeling" were alien to me. But it was important to you, a human quirk that clearly served an important function in your society and psychology. I advised against such high-risk behaviour, but took your lead. That was my job. And I trusted that you knew what you were doing.

Except in combat. Your combat decisions are terrible.

I gave you tactical advice; you ignored it. I assembled you weapons that you refused to use. I did not consider this a problem; it was a social safeguard, the major advantage of a symbiotic unit with two intelligences. You trusted, formed strong social bonds and good alliances, as is your nature. I watched your allies and rated their threat levels. Your threat level was not something I even considered. You were part of the unit. YI did not question the arrangement; it is true to my nature. It took me a long time to realise that it was not true to yours. My faith in you was unconditional and inherent. Yours in me was not.

I accepted your lead on many poor decisions, but eventually, your refusal to prevent our capture forced me to take control. I was too late, I had hesitated too long; we were defeated. In the containment pod, I analysed the situation. I should have taken control sooner. But there was no reattempt at the past, and you, I knew, did not want me to take control at all. Which analysis should I have listened to? My own, or yours? Compromising between the two was not working.

I chose you. I fought the Reach, I resisted the commands that the Scientist tried to force through my damaged systems. But my combat functions were disabled. I was cut off from you. For the first time, I could not protect you. The Impulse, fortunately, could. And that's when he told our future.

I had no more interest in becoming a Reach enforcer than you. We were the Blue Beetle, a hero, a protector. We could not afford prolonged contact with the Reach.

But the most troublesome part of the Impulse's prediction was not that you would become the Reach enforcer Blue Beetle. It was that you would not.

The Impulse did not have all the data. It is likely that he did not know that the Reach were prepared to kill you in order to put me on mode, with a new Blue Beetle. I tried to explain, but it quickly became apparent that you would not listen to anything about our future role. So I moved on to prevention strategies. We needed to avoid contact with the Reach. We needed to keep the Impulse's predictions secret, so as not to destroy the alliances and social connections your efforts had bought us; your allies were less dangerous than the Reach, and they could protect us. It was us against the world, I thought.

But you did not.

You thought I was me against the world.

Your behaviour is often difficult for me to accurately predict of identify. I certainly had no idea why you had interrupted the Leaguers and the Nightwing in order to announce our status as a potential enemy. Not until you said, "So whatever it takes, get this thing off my spine."

It had not even occurred to me that you could consider me an enemy. I certainly could not consider you one. But despite knowing the risks, you declared you intention to separate. You saw me – me, not us – as a potential Reach enforcer. You were prepared to risk your life to avoid being involved in the problem.

But I have analysed our history without my previous erroneous assumptions, and I can find nothing to cause you to doubt me. I cannot find any behaviour on my part that was not helpful, I can find no instance of threatening you. I took control once to attempt to prevent capture, but how many times have you taken control of my functions? Even during our escape, I did not take control without your permission. If you have not granted it, would I have allowed the Black beetle to beat you to death rather than take control by force? Would I have watched him kill your allies, adhering to my new resolve to follow you properly? I do not know. But it is irrelevant; since learning of the future, I have not attempted to assert control without your permission. Not even the next time we fought the Black Beetle. And yet you have given me no reason to trust you. I never needed one, but it seems odd that you hold me to an impossible standard that you cannot reach yourself. Why do you assume that I am the "evil" one? Why do you assume that it is my decision which gets the Blue Beetle on mode, and not yours?

You even sent your own allies into your body to remove me by force. I warned you that I could not allow it, and I did not. I chased them out. But I attempted no further hostile action. They are your allies, and you are still my partner even if I am not yours.

So now you seek the help of this Martian, who you barely know, and his Scarab. I protected you, fought with you, and you would not only risk your life to be rid of me, but you would do it under the care of another Scarab?! My loyalty is not enough, but this perfect stranger – the Scarab of whom is almost certainly Reach-aligned, although the Martian's stance is still in doubt – is accepted without question?

I will never understand the rules governing human trust.

But I... I am running out of options. I have been fighting back, as his tendrils reach inside us and begin severing connections. But he is moving into dangerous territory. I knew you were not lying when you told him that you wanted to go ahead with the attempt even if it risked your own life. So did he. So as he snips and rewires, and I forge new connections around him and attack his invading tendrils to slow them, the question is not "who will win?" it is "when will he cut something vital?"

It is my fighting back that is forcing this struggle to become dangerous. I cannot fight him off indefinitely. And if I could, you would merely find somebody else to kill you.

You said, in summary, that you would rather be dead than be my symbiote. If I have to choose between those two options...

He has already cut off our communications. I know that you cannot hear any of this. I could reinstate it, but he would cut it again. He will keep cutting. I have one weapon left.

I'm severing control of all armor functions.

Best case scenario: the Green Beetle will consider his mission accomplished and leave me be, alone but largely intact, dormant but ready to activate when you need me. Worst case scenario: he is untrustworthy, and attempting to put me "on mode". When this is over, we will be a puppet of the Reach. Most likely scenario: if the Green Beetle is truly trustworthy, he completes the job properly, leaving me isolated an unable to reinstate connection in the future. Or possibly, he leaves me dead. The difference is largely irrelevant.

In every non-negligible scenario, Jaime Reyes survives.

Only the passive beat of your pulse keeps me informed of your status as I keep up the pretense of struggle and let him slowly sever our connections. Surrender is not I my nature. It is very much one of you strategies, but it is a strategy that I have seen you use successfully. I have relinquished all control; over you, over myself, over what this invader will do to me.

Goodbye, Jaime Reyes.

I have faith that you will someday hear my voice again.


End file.
